1. Dig a big hole in your back yard and live in it for 12 days straight. Get someone to walk up and say ânice holeâ and then tell you to dig another one.

2. Pour 10 inches of nasty, crappy water into your hole, then shovel it out, stack sandbags around it and cover it with a sheet of old plywood. Surround it with barbed wire.

3. Whenever anyone visits your house, drop everything you are doing and do a haka on the front lawn with your family for them.

4. Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go the scummiest part of town, find the most run down bar you can, pay $10 per beer until you're hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold. Mutter âF*cking Civvysâ throughout the night.

5. Perform a weekly disassembly and inspection of your lawnmower.

6. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays turn the water pressure in your shower down to a trickle, then on Tuesday and Thursday turn it up so hard it peels skin. On Saturdays and Sundays declare to your entire family that they can't use the shower in order to keep it clean.

7. Go inside and make your bed every morning. Have your wife tear the blankets off at random during the day. Re-make the bed each time until it is time to go back outside and sleep in your hole.

8. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in the back yard at 6am and read it to you. Return to your hole.

9. Submit a request form to your father-in-law, asking if it's ok for you to leave your house before 5pm. Get him to say no. Return to your hole.

10. Invite 200 of your not-so-closest friends to come over. Have them all dig holes in your yard to live in. After 30 days, fill in the holes and wave at your friends and family through the front window of your home as you set out for a After-Action-Review.

11. Shower with above-mentioned friends. Then return to your hole.

12. Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your home (i.e. Dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.). Teach them how to work the dishwasher by power point. Make them go to Waiouru to do a course on operating your DVD player.

13. Inspect your car. Write down on a piece of paper everything you want the garage to fix the next time you bring the car in. Give your wife the list to throw away.

14. Empty all the rubbish bins in your house, and sweep your driveway 3 times a day, whether they need it or not.

15. Repaint your entire house once a month. Paint white rings around all the trees in your street. Paint all curbs yellow. Paint all rocks white.

16. Cook all of your food blindfolded, groping for any spice and seasoning you can get your hands on.

17. Use eighteen cups of budget coffee per pot, and allow each pot to sit 5 hours before drinking. Add a cup of sugar per cup of coffee.

18. Have your neighbour collect all your mail for a month, read your magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item. Get them to give you your mail in monthly intervals.

19. Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV, but only watch CNN and the Weather Channel when you are inside to eat. Tune the tint on the TV to green.

20. Avoid watching your green tinted TV with the exception of movies which are played in the middle of the night. Have the family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one. Make sure itâs a war movie.

21. Have your 5-year-old cousin give you a haircut with sheep shears.

22. Sew big pockets to the legs of your pants. Don't use them.

23. Spend 2 weeks sleeping in holes in your neighboursâ trees and call it an exercise.

24. Spend a year sleeping in a run down house that the local council has condemned and call it world travel.

25. Attempt to spend 5 years working at Subway, and NOT get promoted. Get told the only way you can get promoted is do two years at Subway in Waiouru.

26. Ensure that any promotions you do get are from stepping on the dead bodies of your co-workers.

27. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone and shout at the top of your lungs that your home is under attack, and order them to man their fighting positions. Don't let them eat or sleep or go to the toilet again for two days.

28. Make your family menu a week ahead of time and do so without checking the pantry and refrigerator. Tell them they can eat anything they like, so long as its sausages.

29. Post a menu on the refrigerator door informing your family that you are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for at least an hour. When they finally get to the kitchen, tell them that you are out of steak, but you have deep fried stale fish. Repeat daily until they don't pay attention to the menu any more so they just ask for deep fried stale fish.

30. In the middle of June, place a gate at the end of your street. Have your family stand watches at the gate, rotating at 4-hour intervals.

31. Make your family live with you in your hole for 6 weeks. Then tell them that at the end of the 6th week you're going to take them to Queenstown for "block leave." When the end of the 6th week rolls around, inform them that Queenstown has been cancelled due to the fact that they need to get ready for Individual Skill Certification, and that it will be another week before they can go back into the house.

32. In your hole (refer to #1), with 200 of your not-so-closest friends get the flu.

33. Sleep in a thicket of blackberries or rose bushes. Tie a string to your foot that runs to the house. Have your wife yank on the string about 3 hours after you go to sleep. Crawl out of the bushes and go to the house to see what she wants. She should then shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble "Just making sure you're okay."

34. Do not sleep from 1:00 a.m. Monday mornings until 3 p.m. Wednesday afternoons. Tie a branch around your neck and chew mud to stay awake.

35. Don't change your socks for a week. After they disintegrate off with pieces of your feet, put on an unbroken pair of new boots and go for a 12 k walk.

36. Leave the lawn mower running next to your hole 24 hours a day. When you get an opportunity to sleep in your house, put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.

37. Have the paperboy give you a haircut with nail clippers.

38. Set up a portable toilet in the corner of your section. Once a week, have the service truck back into your yard and pump it out. Make sure the wind carries the smell into your neighbors house. Ignore his complaints.

39. Every other month pull every single possession you own out of your house and line everything up on your lawn from smallest to largest, front to back. Count everything and write it down to file with your insurance company. Give your wife the list to throw away.

40.Get up every night around midnight and stroll around your yard to "check the perimeter."

41. Run the garden hose to your hole and turn it on. Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night. Jump up and get dressed as fast as you can. Run out into the backyard and get in your hole.

42. Once a month, take apart every major appliance in your home and put them back together again.

43. Build a scale model of your yard. Make your children draw sketches of it including little arrows indicating what they are going to do when they go out to play. Post these sketches on a bulletin board for reference.

44.Every so often, throw the cat in front of your hole and shout "CONTACT!" Then run into the house to cut off the power mains. Yell at the wife and kids for violating security and not maintaining good noise and light discipline.

45. Put on the headphones from your stereo set, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck with string. Go sit in your car. Say to no one in particular "Lost-One, this is Lost-Three, are you lost too, over?" Sit there for three or four hours with the engine running. Say again to no one in particular "Negative contact, Lost-Three out." Roll up your headphones and paper cup and place them in a box.

46..

47. Spend half the day doing a report on what you have been doing. Give it to your wife to throw away.

48. Whenever you need something vital, write it down on a piece of paper and get five of your neighbours to approve it. Then give it to your mother in law and be told that there is no cost centre for that and get her to throw it away.

45. Put on the headphones from your stereo set, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck with string. Go sit in your car. Say to no one in particular "Lost-One, this is Lost-Three, are you lost too, over?" Sit there for three or four hours with the engine running. Say again to no one in particular "Negative contact, Lost-Three out." Roll up your headphones and paper cup and place them in a box.

45. Put on the headphones from your stereo set, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck with string. Go sit in your car. Say to no one in particular "Lost-One, this is Lost-Three, are you lost too, over?" Sit there for three or four hours with the engine running. Say again to no one in particular "Negative contact, Lost-Three out." Roll up your headphones and paper cup and place them in a box.

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Love it!

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How is this possible when we all know that NZ is still stuck in a 1950's timewarp.
PS: Kiwis: WW2 - We won, hurrah.

45. Put on the headphones from your stereo set, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck with string. Go sit in your car. Say to no one in particular "Lost-One, this is Lost-Three, are you lost too, over?" Sit there for three or four hours with the engine running. Say again to no one in particular "Negative contact, Lost-Three out." Roll up your headphones and paper cup and place them in a box.

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Love it!

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How is this possible when we all know that NZ is still stuck in a 1950's timewarp.
PS: Kiwis: WW2 - We won, hurrah.

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A couple of years ago I would have agreed with you. Now we have some pretty good gear. Unfortunately there is no one left in the Army to play with it. We now actually have more gear than we can break in any given period!

You could always try guarding the VCs at the Army Museum a little better.
Is that Colonel Blimp character still I/C of the Museum, from his performance at the time, along the lines of... "Ah, we never expected anyone to steal Victoria Crosses worth millions of dollars and so kept them in an unlocked biscuit tin in a room as secure as a wendy house.....bluster, bluster." I do hope he's been quietly pensioned off.

You could always try guarding the VCs at the Army Museum a little better.
Is that Colonel Blimp character still I/C of the Museum, from his performance at the time, along the lines of... "Ah, we never expected anyone to steal Victoria Crosses worth millions of dollars and so kept them in an unlocked biscuit tin in a room as secure as a wendy house.....bluster, bluster." I do hope he's been quietly pensioned off.

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"we've repaired the broken glass from last time so she'll be right mate"

Willie Apiata will be so relieved I'm sure.
Still if they go AWOL again he and his mates could be let loose to find them with 'Cough' "Loose RoE", rather than the NZ Police, dodgy lawyers and English Peers.

I had a great time with the Kiwis on Long Look without ever having to spend time in a trench. First exercise as a keen Tp Cpl I sorted the stag list out on the first night - on showing it to the Tp Sgt he said 'no worries, Tpr Seiko does all the stags'. On asking who Tpr Seiko was he pointed to his watch.